New York Magazine - Intelligencer: Has Long Covid Always Existed, by Jeff Wise, November 2022

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Long Covid in the media and social media 2022

This is a very long article, and I haven't read it yet myself, but see names as Bateman and Garner in it.

Intelligencer: Has Long COVID Always Existed?
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/is-long-covid-actually-chronic-fatigue-syndrome.html

 

I wouldn't read this if you are worried about your blood pressure.

It (approvingly) quotes Shorter, Wessely, Sharpe, Devine (who makes unverified claims about death threats) and a host of other quacks and charlatans. It also claims that the NICE guidelines were changed solely due to patient pressure and that the controversy over PACE only stems from activists.

The author constantly points out the lack of biological evidence behind ME yet gullibly swallows every BPS pseudo-scientific explanation for ME/CFS (hysteria or maladaptive personalities anyone?).

This just demonstrates that most journalists are scientific illiterates.

 

I'm reading it now and doesn't look good. @dave30th , you are referred to as well:

One of the loudest voices decrying the PACE trial was that of a Berkeley academic named David Tuller, who in 2015 wrote a three-part, 15,000-word post that found fault with its protocol. His main criticism was that the trial’s investigators had a weak definition of recovered. Within the advocate community Tuller’s critique was viewed as “devastating.” But the study’s authors countered that their results were solid; while some patients had already improved with regard to some symptoms before the study began, none had fully recovered. (Since then, at least four other studies have reinforced the finding that GET and CBT are effective for treating chronic fatigue.)

 

OK—advice partially taken—I skimmed it very quickly and saw Adam Gaffney quoted and sort of stopped there.

ETA also saw the creepy Canadian guy quoted.

 

Very underwhelming. Basically "both sides" journalism presenting the voice of the abused and the abuser as of equal value. It quotes more deniers like Garner, Sharpe and Gaffney, although Wessely declined to answer. Which is probably the smartest thing he's done in his entire career.

Some of the details aren't bad, but it tries very hard to make this as a struggle between establishment medicine and naïve rowdy activists who could turn out to be right, just don't bet on it.

It also shows that absolute nothing has changed in a century, other than for the worse. The discussion is the exact same, it's fully stuck in time despite decades of implementation of a broken paradigm, which clearly doesn't matter, outcomes are irrelevant and so is evidence. Which is extremely rare. There are very, very few things done worse today by professionals than were done a century ago. Basically nothing, certainly nothing important.

 

The main problem was that they tried too hard to represent "both sides."

They also called it "chronic fatigue", only mentioned PEM once, and covered the BPS model in details while not giving any of the evidence it's biomedical--just that doctors believe it is, not the actual findings. And they act like ME activism, rather than these biomedical findings, is what convinced people it's a real illness. They got Tuller's (and our) critique of PACE wrong: Our biggest grievance is subjective outcomes plus no blinding.

They cited a lot of ME specialists though.

 

Disappointing framing. Feral patient activists versus benevolent, learned physicians. Plenty of conditions lack singular bio markers and are still spared the psychosocial designation. Piece totally ignores the biological findings that do exist. How can one embrace the deconditioning narrative without even touching on CPET results?

This makes it sound like there is nothing wrong with our bodies. Very partisan reporting. I’m sure the usual suspects are obsequious as ever on Twitter. Has anyone gauged the response yet?

 

Someone paying attention would notice that 3 of those 5 have Chalder as author, a PACE author, with another one by Moss-Morris, a close collaborator. So she confirmed her own claims. That's you know they're solid, obviously.

One of those from Chalder is a meta review that cites PACE, is very heavy with self-citation, from Chalder herself but also her close colleagues, and heavily uses the Chalder scale. Honestly, even the studies funded by tobacco companies weren't as blatantly corrupt and biased as this.

So basically: "I was correct", says a study I funded, and wrote, and reviewed, and meta reviewed, then mixed together with other self-reviews in a systematic review I co-authored and validated. Those findings sure are reinforced, by someone who was involved in the creation and enforcement of this entire paradigm.

The article doesn't even mention that all those studies have been judged as flawed and their claims of evidence dismissed by NICE. Twice, with the German authorities doing the same, considering them too biased and unreliable (but using some anyway). This is terrible journalism, no attempt at fairly presenting the facts.

 

Yes, I haven't read it yet. But at least he got it right that I'm an academic. Of course, he never contacted me.

 

I’m shocked PACE isn’t skewered every time it’s referenced. It tells me that the author either didn’t bother scrutinizing the study or the allure of elite skepticism blinded him to its flaws.

 

They always use the same lines to try to attack and dismiss those criticising work like PACE, because those are the most effective approaches for them. They're really consistent on this. I think that it's always useful to read things like this and try to learn how to best avoid letting them use those lines.

 

As all of the stereotypes are already entrenched, this attitude is profoundly disturbing to me because it forces patients to be the ones who have to speak truth to power, and without truth, not only can we not get good research, care and services, there will never be any justice; which we deserve as much as everything else. There needs to be investigation and real justice across the board (and not just a few scapegoats).

Where else in the world do we not confront the stereotypes and victimization of other repressed people; especially people who are repressed and harmed to the degree that we have been? I’ve been shocked continually in the U.S. at the lack of naming names and telling of the whole truth. I personally feel further victimized by the people and organizations who are supposed to be helping us who omit the totality of what has been done to us. I never feel like our story is being fully told in a satisfying way.

 

Given the serious errors of fact in the article (eg, the new NICE Guidelines, PACE), I'd guess that either the author is the most incompetent journalist on the planet or he has received a 'briefing' from someone on the BPS side. He's then tried to 'balance' this partisan information with a few quotes from Bateman etc.

The strong theme of misogyny throughout the article (eg, hysteria, it's only "white, middle-class women" who are affected) would lead me to place my money on the source being Shorter. As I recall, he also had a real bee in his bonnet about the 2015 Institute of Medicine report which is also misrepresented and disparaged in the article.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1588646672128958466

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1588578198287024128

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1588699790636113922

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1588903518391652353

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1588604436464959489


https://twitter.com/user/status/1588970761137840128


https://twitter.com/user/status/1588987099617071104

 

The rest of @dave30th's tweets on this thread.

Edited to add punctuation.